Hiddleswift and the Vilification of Women

By Alex Wolf on July 26, 2016

Hiddleswift, the pet name for Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston. It’s a name that’s been fangirled over, mocked, and generally obsessed over in the last week or so. In fact, Taylor Swift has been in the media a lot lately, whether you love her, despise her, or simply wish people would shut up about her. I probably agree most with the last one. I enjoy Taylor’s music when it suits me and when it doesn’t, I ignore her. I don’t love her, but I certainly don’t despise her either. And I’ll be the first to admit I have a certain amount of respect for a woman who’s managed to stay so relevant in 2016 despite her entrance into the music industry as a sweet, squeaky clean country singer who no one thought would make it through the last decade.

Image credit: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/07/15/tom-hiddleston-taylor-swift_n_11011242.html

 

But listen, no matter how I feel about Taylor on any given day, I think the way people reacted towards her when she and Tom Hiddleston started dating was completely unacceptable.

Lets recount what happened: as soon as photos of Taylor and Tom kissing on a beach surfaced online, people completely lost their minds. Everyone was shocked that Taylor had rebounded so fast, considering she had broken up with her most recent boyfriend Calvin Harris about a week prior. And of course, outraged fans and mean comments soon followed. People immediately called Taylor a “slut,” “whore,” and all the other derogatory names women get called when they just happened to have dated more than one man in their life. One woman on Twitter even tweeted a picture of a “comparison” of Taylor’s vagina with her daughter’s using sandwiches. One had lunch meat hanging out of it, the other had the lunch meat completely packed inside. The moral: the sandwich with lunch meat hanging out represents Taylor’s “loose” vagina, the one with meat packed inside represents the virginal, tight vagina of the daughter (that’s not how vagina’s work, by the way.) It seems to represent how women are viewed as nothing more than vaginas and/or sandwiches. Go figure.

https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/we-spoke-to-the-woman-who-said-taylor-swifts-vagina-looks-like-a-sloppy-ham-sandwich

 

But honestly, that stuff isn’t what’s making me furious. It’s how fans reacted to Tom’s side of the story, or apparently lack of it, is what really has me angry.

If Tom Hiddleston was at some point brought up in the debate of Hiddleswift, it was not to vilify him or rant about his past romantic endeavors like Swift. It was to coddle him like a child, exclaim that poor Tom had been seduced by the witch known as Taylor Swift. It was to say that he was a poor man in peril, that he deserved so much better than her. No one mentioned the obvious fact that, #1, Taylor does not have any magical powers of seduction, and #2, Tom Hiddleston is a fully grown man who is capable of making his own decisions and clearly wanted to have a relationship with Taylor.

Sadly, women being portrayed as witches who seduce and reel in defenseless men is not a new concept. It goes back to the Middle Ages at least, and probably much farther than that. In one of the most famous cases, after Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, failed to produce a male heir, she was branded as a witch and a seductress that had cast a spell over the king. It was this accusation, in addition to one of adultery, that gave Henry the reason to divorce and behead her. During the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries, thousands of women were persecuted for the crime of witchcraft, usually from accusations made out of jealousy or spite. Sound familiar? Although Taylor has not been physically burned at the stake, she has been burned by scathing words because she dared cross Hiddleston’s rabid, jealous fans.

The point is: for centuries women have been characterized as seductresses and witches so men didn’t have to take the blame for anything, whether it was cheating on their wife, rape, or lust. It’s a label meant to turn men against women, and even women against women. Let’s put aside all of Taylor’s supposed transgressions for a moment, and think about this: would anyone have tried to claim Tom had seduced Taylor if he was the one who had had multiple romantic relationships, not her?

http://www.popsugar.com/celebrity/Taylor-Swift-Tom-Hiddleston-Kissing-Pictures-June-2016-41689484#photo-41689484

 

I’m not saying that Taylor is a complete angel. The recent leak of video from Kim Kardashian shows that she can be petty, vindictive, and she often plays the victim. But this backlash didn’t have anything to do with Taylor. I have a feeling people would have reacted similarly if Tom had started dating any notable female celebrity. The real reason behind this backlash is simple: society at it’s core still harbors these internal, sexist ideas, and people still feel threatened by confident women. It shows we still have a long way to go in reformatting these perceptions, even in terms of ourselves. So, let’s think more critically about how the media views women the next time one is characterized in a gossip magazine as a witch or a bitch. Try to form your own opinions.

When confronted about the relationship, Tom’s response was as cool and un-bewitched as possible. “Well, um. How best to put this? That notion is-look, the truth is that Taylor Swift and I are together, and we’re very happy. Thanks for asking. That’s the truth. It’s not a publicity stunt.” But of course, people still continue to claim he’s under Taylor’s spell. In truth, Tom doesn’t deserve a better girlfriend, but he really does deserve better fans.

Sources: Movie Pilot (http://moviepilot.com/posts/4000397), VICE (https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/we-spoke-to-the-woman-who-said-taylor-swifts-vagina-looks-like-a-sloppy-ham-sandwich), The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/07/15/tom-hiddleston-taylor-swift_n_11011242.html), and History Extra (http://www.historyextra.com/feature/tudors/why-did-anne-boleyn-have-die)

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